Tag: Westmoreland Historic District

The once-white house at 435 Hawthorne — where a young LBJ stayed rent-free with his Uncle George in his early 1930’spre-politickin’ teacher days — is up for grabs again. The 2-story 3-bedroom at the corner with Garrott St. (half a block east of Taft) is back on the market as of just under 2 weeks ago for just under $750,000. The Westmoreland Historic District home was sold back in 2012 for $266,000 and change, and most recently went for about $535,000 in 2013 (post flip-ready redo).

What’s new this time around? You can look for yourself at some of the new finishes in the click-and-drag 360-degree photo tour set up by the current sellers, including some rotate-in-place views inside what’s advertised as a use-it-or-rent-it garage apartment suite out back. The new sales site also notes that the back yard has been redone with an easy-to-please spread of artificial lawn:

What’s that — up in the air, over Westmoreland and Spur 527? According to a reader, it’s the skeletal remnants of 3618 Burlington St.’s sideyard billboard, which has been coming down since some time late last week. The sign structure is shown on its last leg in the snapshot up top from Saturday morning (that’s out of 3 legs originally, as seen in the listing photo below that from the 2015 sale). Per the newest listing, the full interior and exterior blankout and makeover of the 3-story Westmoreland Historic District home should have finished up around last Friday.

That Burlington St. mansion nestled in along the 527 Spur leading from Downtown to 59 is back on the market this week, though the listing implies that the interior redo and whitewashing is still in progress. The house, built between 1897 and 1908 depending on who you ask, went up for sale in the Westmoreland Historic District early last year for $1.8 million. The current owners bought the property that summer for $880,000 and quickly sent an application to the city’s history folks asking for approval to move some doors and windows around, as well as to add a deck out back and a balcony outside the existing second-story doors to nowhere in the master bedroom. (The bricks, already painted brown, appear to have been painted white instead, as has most of the interior.)

The property is now listed at a smidge under $2.4 million. Not pictured or mentioned in the new listing is the 3-post freeway billboard previously seen sunning itself by the pool on the northern end of the front yard, shown below as it appeared in the old listing:

Rising stately on its corner in the Westmoreland Historic District, a well-appointed and well-maintained hundred-year-plus-old mansion fitted with terraces, balconies, and porches features all the craftsmanship of its day — and one very large indicator of the present: this freeway-side billboard in the back yard, by the pool:

15-HOME WESTMORELAND PLACE DEVELOPMENT CLEARS HURDLES, MORE TREE SPACE When last we left the 0.83-acre lot tucked up against Spur 527 between Marshall and Alabama St. (catty corner from the Broadstone at Midtown second block), developer Carnegie Homes was seeking city approval for a variance for reduced setbacks from the spur and Alabama St. The variance was approved last November; the site plan, which lays out space for 7 homesites within the Westmoreland Historic District (on the north portion of the property) and another 8 tighter townhome lots on the free-range southern end, has been adjusted slightly to allow a 5,000-sq.-ft. promenade and private park area leading up to and surrounding the enormous live oak tree (branches visible in the above photo) near the property’s northwest corner. A new sign announcing the development went up last week. It’s been renamed a couple times too. The former Carnegie Oaks at Westmoreland — described on the company’s website as The Oak at Westmoreland — is now Masterson Oaks at Westmoreland, Carnegie’s Arpan Gupta tells Swamplot, after the Masterson Mansion that stood on the site as recently as the 1950s, but was torn down after the spur bisected its grounds. Gupta is still seeking approvals within the Westmoreland historic district for a reduced setback along Marshall St. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox

KEEPING ONE MONTROSE TREE IN RESERVE The developer of those spur-side homes planned for this Westmoreland lot between Marshall and W. Alabama St. says that the old live oak shown in the photo isn’t going anywhere. In fact, Arpan Gupta tells Swamplot that a 1,410-sq.-ft. reserve area — as one commenter notes on the site plan — is being established around the tree’s “drip line” to set aside a park that not just the homeowners will be allowed to use. Additionally, explains Gupta, architecture firm Knudson and tree service Arbor Care have both been employed to take protective measures — mulching, fertilizing, fencing, etc. — during the “stress of construction.” [Previously on Swamplot] Photo: Allyn West

The sign shows that a variance is pending to reduce the setback here along Spur 527 — at left in the photo above — the better to fit 15 single-family lots on the less-than-an-acre property between W. Alabama and Marshall St. in the Westmoreland Historic District. A site plan included in the variance application for the subdivision Carnegie Oaks at Westmoreland shows that the 0.83-acre lot would be parceled out, with driveway access to the north from Marshall and to the south from W. Alabama. The lot’s right across the street from that fixed-up former Skylane complex the Spur. A city rep says that the planning commission will decide on the variance next week.

LBJ wuz here: Built in 1904, this 3,161-sq.-ft. home on the corner of Hawthorne and Garrott in the Westmoreland Historic District gave the future president a place to crash in 1931 when he was teaching public speaking and coaching the debate team at Sam Houston High School.

In March 2011, the house was put on the market for the first time in 90 years; the price climbed to almost $619,000 that June. It sat for a year, going for just under $285,000. Renovations began that summer. And the house returned 9 days ago with a new MLS number, new photos, and a new historically low — for this place, anyway — price: $569,900.

A reader sends a couple photos of “what will soon no longer be a nice understated commercial building” at 315 W. Alabama, just south of the Westmoreland Historic District west of Midtown:

I watched the remodel work inside going on for a while and was a little shocked to see the brick facade receiving prep work to be refaced in stucco. You can see the nice bit of decorative garland in the process of being knocked off by the end of today.